1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to data management, and more particularly, to a method and system for applying annotation techniques to telephonic communications.
2. Description of the Related Art
Tacit knowledge is knowledge that is not made explicit because it may be highly personal, is oftentimes very transient, and usually requires joint, shared activities to be transmitted. Examples of tacit knowledge include subjective insights, intuitions, facts learned from conversational exchanges, and hunches. Because tacit knowledge is not typically captured in a systematic manner, it is often lost.
In many commercial settings, however, tacit knowledge exchanged between two individuals during a telephone conversation may be extremely valuable. For example, a salesperson may use tacit knowledge to help close sales with a client by having access to information about the client. Another example involves call management techniques used in modern call centers. Customers may contact a business regarding the products and services offered by the business. Because a customer will rarely be able to contact a particular individual at a call center more than once, tacit knowledge between telephone calls is lost for one side of the conversation. That is, the individual customer has the tacit knowledge gained from prior contact with the business, but different customer service representatives (CSRs) fielding the telephone calls do not. This can lead to poor customer service when customers are treated differently by different CSRs.
One approach for more permanently capturing tacit knowledge is to create annotations that capture information about a telephone conversation. While the basic unit of information exchange—a telephone conversation—has not changed, the technology we use to place telephone calls, however, has evolved (and is evolving) rapidly. Current telephone systems record the date, time, phone number, and length of a call. Some systems can also record the audio (i.e., the conversation) from the call. Without listening to an entire recording, however, the tacit knowledge remains largely inaccessible.
Further, some current call center systems provide written summaries or descriptions of a prior telephone call to a CSR agent fielding a subsequent. Such text based systems, however, fail to capture the tone, timbre, and timing that are inherent in interactive telephone conversation. That is, although these types of records may capture some of the substance of the prior conversation, they fail to capture much of the tacit knowledge available. Moreover, telephone conversations are an inherently audio-based communications method, therefore, any system to transform such communications to another form, e.g., written, will necessarily lose some information content due to the translation.
Accordingly, it would be useful for a telecommunication system to allow conversation participants to create audio-based annotation recordings that annotate portions of a telephone conversation.